The start of the academic year always arrives with excitement for students, staff, and faculty alike. This year, that feeling is especially pronounced, as 10 new professors have joined the McIntire faculty, bringing with them an energy invigorating all areas of the Commerce School as the fall semester begins.
McIntire welcomes these recognized experts in their field who have come to Grounds on the strength of their insightful research and impactful knowledge, providing a boost to the Commerce School’s renowned undergraduate and graduate programs as it steps into its second successful century of business education.
Accounting
Assistant Professor Yi Liang comes to the Accounting Area from Temple University. He has an undergraduate degree in Information Management and Information Systems from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, and holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Administration from Carnegie Mellon University. Liang’s research on the economic impact of corporate governance reform and changes to corporate law has been published in top journals such as The Accounting Review; Management Science; and Journal of Accounting Research. His main teaching interests are accounting information systems and data analytics; he is teaching courses in data management in M.S. in Commerce and M.S. in Accounting Programs.
Lecturer Jill Mitchell joins McIntire from Northern Virginia Community College to teach COMM 2010: Intro to Financial Accounting and COMM 2020: Intro to Managerial Accounting. Holding her undergraduate degree in Management Information Systems from the University of Georgia, Mitchell is a McIntire alum, having earned her M.S. in Accounting at the Commerce School; she also earned a Master of Education, with a concentration in Instructional Design and Technology, from George Mason University. An author of multiple textbooks and an expert and thought leader in online education, Mitchell is the recipient of multiple teaching awards and recognitions, including the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) Outstanding Faculty Award and the American Accounting Association/J. Michael and Mary Anne Cook/Deloitte Foundation Prize.
Finance
Assistant Professor W Ben McCartney joins McIntire’s Finance Area following four years at the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University. The former Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia examines how social interactions, civic engagement, and politics connect with household finance, real estate, and urban economics. His research has been published in Journal of Urban Economics; Management Science; and The Review of Financial Studies. It has also been presented at numerous national and international academic conferences and appeared in the popular press, including Al Jazeera, The Globe and Mail, and The New York Times. McCartney graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Purdue University in 2012 and received his doctorate in 2018 from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.
IT & Innovation
Associate Professor Jing Gong is one of three new faculty members in the IT & Innovation Area, joining from her most recent position at Lehigh University. Gong’s research focuses on empirical models to analyze firm and consumer behavior in online markets, primarily focusing on electronic commerce, digital marketing, and two-sided online markets (peer-to-peer platforms). Her work has been accepted for publication by top journals including MIS Quarterly; Information Systems Research; Journal of Management Information Systems; and The Accounting Review. She obtained a Ph.D. in Information Systems and Management from Carnegie Mellon University and a bachelor’s degree in Information Management and Information Systems from Tsinghua University.
Dorothy E. Leidner, Ph.D., Dr.h.c., will be joining UVA as the Leslie H. Goldberg Jefferson Scholars Foundation Distinguished Professor in Business Ethics in January 2023. She is currently the Ferguson Professor of Information Systems at Baylor University and serves as the current editor-in-chief of Journal of the Association for Information Systems. Her research covers a broad array of topics and methods, with nearly equal attention to theory, empirical, and practitioner-oriented papers. Leidner’s research has appeared in many top journals, including MIS Quarterly; Information Systems Research; Journal of the Association for Information Systems; Journal of Management Information Systems; and Organization Science. With over 47,500 citations recorded on Google Scholar, she is one of the most cited researchers in the field.
Associate Professor Roman Lukyanenko comes to McIntire from his most recent position at HEC Montréal. Lukyanenko’s research investigates and develops innovative information technology solutions to support management of natural resources, development of smart cities, and decision making in healthcare systems. He has published more than 120 scientific conference and journal articles, including leading scientific journals, such as Nature, as well as IT-focused journals, including MIS Quarterly; Information Systems Research; and Journal of the Association for Information Systems. He earned his Ph.D. from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
Alexander Zorychta joins McIntire as Lecturer, teaching Intro to Entrepreneurship. He previously served as Assistant Director for Technology Entrepreneurship at the UVA School of Engineering and Applied Science, where he taught Creativity for Invention and De-Risking Entrepreneurship—and where he earned his undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering. Zorychta also completed his MBA in Entrepreneurship & Business Analytics at the Darden School of Business. His research focuses on harnessing creativity, cultivating entrepreneurial communities of practice, and designing education programs and metrics that endow an entrepreneurial mindset. He is a Co-Founder of Y Combinator-funded Gamebytes, a casual mobile gaming startup, Head of Product for guitar learning tech startup Zealot Interactive, and Founder of College Startup magazine, an online publication that highlighted the successes of student entrepreneurs.
Management
Assistant Professor Kiera Allison has had the shortest journey—by distance—to the Commerce School, coming to the Management Area from UVA’s English Department, where she had worked since 2017. Allison teaches Management Communication as part of the third-year Integrated Core and an elective course on Persuasion and Influence, and will also be teaching in the M.S. in MIT Program. She earned her Ph.D. from the University in English Literature in 2015 and has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at Emory University. During Allison’s academic career at UVA, she has taught courses in public speaking, science and medical communication, and the science and psychology of popular music.
Assistant Professor Yu Tse Heng joins the School from the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, where she graduated in June of 2022. Heng teaches Organizational Behavior in the Integrated Core. Her research focuses on grief and methods for handling suffering in the organizational context; she also studies creativity, positive organizational scholarship, and aspects of humanization in organizations. Heng’s research has been published in Academy of Management Journal; Journal of Applied Psychology; and Journal of Organizational Behavior. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from National University of Singapore.
Marketing
Assistant Professor J. Christine Kim is the newest member of the Commerce School’s Marketing Area. Her research is aimed at understanding consumer motivation and decision making, particularly in relation to resource management. Specifically, Kim studies how consumers make decisions under both a shortage of resources (time pressure, busyness, scarcity) and a surplus of resources (indulgent consumption, wasteful consumption, sustainable consumption, disposal decision). She is also interested in examining how ideology such as political or religious affiliation impacts consumer decisions. Kim’s research has been published in Journal of Consumer Research; Journal of Marketing; Psychological Science; and Harvard Business Review and appeared in high-impact media such as Forbes, BBC, U.S. News, and New York Post, among others. Currently serving on the editorial board of Journal of Consumer Psychology, Kim taught most recently at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She earned her Ph.D. in Marketing from INSEAD and master’s in Mind, Brain Education from Harvard University and received her bachelor’s in Cognitive Science from UCLA.
